THE RENDEZVOUS
WHEN, after a long, steady gallop, the fugitives rested their horses
again, no unusual sounds broke the eternal quietude of the desert night.
For a time they walked the animals again, and then, at a late hour, the
leader of the flight turned sharply toward the mountains and continued
in their direction.
Foothills are little more than a figure of speech as regards the
mountain ranges of southern California; for the mountains uprear
themselves virtually from level land with unexpected abruptness, and
there are scarcely any intermediate levels to render an approach
gradual. Before very long, then, the night riders had left the desert
below them and were in such foothills as the range boasted; and in
less time still they were ascending sharply and entering forests of
piñon pine and mountain mahogany. Still farther up they came upon a
sprinkling of pines and junipers, and before two hours had passed found
themselves in a black forest of conifers.
“I can’t imagine how you know where you’re going,” the man muttered to
Manzanita.
“I do, though,” she assured him. “There’s an old, old road on our right
now, which we have crossed and recrossed several times to give us our
bearings. I’m keeping close to it and following its general trend; but
it would never do for us to follow it directly. It’s almost overgrown
with brush. It ran to a gold mine worked by the Spanish, perhaps fifty
years ago.”
Many times they rested their tired horses during the steep ascent.
Signs of morning were in air and sky when they topped the summit
and crossed a mountain meadow, lush with tall, cool grasses. On the
opposite side of the level valley Manzanita plunged into the forest
again. They rode for perhaps half a mile, when she reined in and left
the saddle.
“This is as far as we go with the caballos,” she announced. “We’ll hide
the saddles and bridles here, loose the broncs, and pack in to where
we’re going to hide. Two miles farther, perhaps. The horses will head
back for the meadow we crossed, and the searchers will find them there,
no doubt. But that’ll tell ’em nothing. Whenever our horses get away
down at Squawtooth in summer they always drift up here to the meadows.
That’s why I had you ride behind me after we left the desert. One
wandering horse usually trails another. Even if they should find our
horses’ tracks leading to the meadow, they won’t know whether they were
carrying riders or not. They’ll have a job to find out just where we
got out of the saddles.”
For a time she searched about in the blackness, and presently called
to him to bring the saddles to her. When he had obeyed he found her
standing over a brush heap of dry black-oak boughs.
“Trimmings from black oaks our outfit cut for fence posts,” she
enlightened him. She held a long pole, and now thrust it under the
heap. “I’ll pry up the whole pile with this,” she said. “You cache the
saddles way under, then I’ll let the pile drop back over them.”
Soon they were away again, with packs on their backs and the rifle, in
its scabbard, swinging from The Falcon’s shoulder.
It was growing light now. The eastern sky was shell pink, and clouds
were revealed.
“Those look like wind clouds,” said the girl reflectively. “A big blow
is about due. You’ve never been in this country when the wind blows.
Say, you’ll remember it when it does! I hope one is on the way. I could
use a windstorm just now.”
They left little or no trail on the soft, slippery carpet of pine
needles. Through an unbroken forest Manzanita led The Falcon, seeming
to guide herself by instinct, since to the latter one tree looked as
straight and unindividual as thousands of others through which they had
passed.
Then they began to ascend again, and the land grew broken and rocky,
with trees scattered about. Soon, except for a sentinel pine here and
there on a rugged hillside, there were no trees; the ground was covered
by rocks and scattering chaparral. The chaparral, about twelve feet in
height and composed of prickly buckthorn and southern manzanita, grew
continually denser, till at last they were confronted by a solid wall
of it seemingly impregnable.
“Now, if our Bible student, Halfaman Daisy, were here,” said the girl,
“the harrowing experience of old Nebuchadnezzar probably would be
recalled to his mind. For, like Nebuchadnezzar, we’ve got to crawl now.”
The Falcon watched with interest while she readjusted her improvised
pack. She lowered it from between her shoulder blades to the small of
her back, then lay down flat on her face.
“‘Follow your leader!’” she quoted from the old game and wriggled into
the chaparral and disappeared.
Falcon the Flunky followed her example.
Under the chaparral tops it was black as ink once more. The land was
covered with a deep carpet of the bushes’ tiny shattered leaves, and
was unobstructed save for the sturdy trunks of the growth. Falcon the
Flunky could hear the girl wriggling over the cackling leaves ahead of
him, and set his course by the sounds. Now and then he collided with
a trunk, and now and then the prickly foliage, three feet above his
head, raked off his hat. Birds twittered and fluttered away, disturbed
from their nap just before the dawn.
Then of a sudden the crawlers came out in an open space and lay
panting. The sky had lighted amazingly during their progress through
the dark. Manzanita lay flat, with her arms outstretched and a smile of
accomplishment on her young lips.
“Well,” she sighed at last, sitting erect and picking the trash from
her hair, “we’re here. And they won’t find us in a thousand years. In
these mountains there are hundreds of chaparral patches like this one,
and no one ever thinks of crawling into them. No sensible person, that
is to say. Mart and I do it, though. We’re always hunting for hidden
treasure, you know, old Spanish mines, and skeletons and things like
that.”
The Falcon looked about.
Great, gaunt gray rocks upreared themselves in the middle of the
opening, which was circular and not over a hundred feet in diameter,
with heavy chaparral forming a dense wall on all sides.
“There’s water in those rocks,” she informed him. “That’s how we might
stay here forever, if we had enough grub. Down below, on our right as
we came up, are a creek and sinegas; and I presume the water here is a
part of that same system. But no one would suspect that there is water
here, in the heart of this thicket. Chaparral won’t stand wet feet.
Too much water kills it. That accounts for the break here in the heart
of the patch. Mart and I are the sole discoverers, of course. Now, any
one trying to find us will know that we must be near water in order to
live. And as chaparral is invariably on dry, poor soil, they’ll never
dream we could be in here, with water right beside us.”
“How long do you propose to stay here, Manzanita?” he asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” she replied lightly, rising to her feet. “Till we
can collect our wits, anyway. I love this sort of thing. Mart and I’ve
played fugitive so much, but never before have I had the chance to do
anything of the kind for a really truly reason.”
“You’re only an imaginative kid,” he sternly accused. “What will your
father think! He’ll be distracted, dear.”
She remained thoughtful and silent for a time.
“He may worry,” she admitted at last. “But, then, he brought it all
on himself. The idea of his forcing you with a six to be tied up! I
don’t know what’s getting to be the matter with pa here of late--ever
since I’ve been eighteen. If it hadn’t been for me--oh, well, let’s
not worry. I’ve been thinking up all sorts of plans. If the wind gets
up we’ll communicate with pa or somebody before very long. We’ll enter
into negotiations with our enemies. If they’ll do so and so, we’ll do
so and so--and they’ll have to agree, ’cause we’ll have the cinch on
’em from the start.
“Now, let’s stir our stumps and fix up our camp over there in the rocks
beside the water. Then we’d better get some sleep if we can.”
They went into the outcropping of huge, gray stones, some of them as
high as twenty feet above their heads, a grotesque assemblage that
formed an admirable shelter. From under one of them water bubbled up,
but seemed not to spread far over the surface of the ground before the
loose, gravelly soil soaked it down again.
“Artesian,” observed The Falcon.
“I suppose so. It’s a freak outbreak, way up here. Outlaws could hide
here and defy a posse for months, if their grub didn’t give out.”
With the small fencing hatchet that the girl carried in a scabbard on
her saddle The Falcon cut chaparral limbs for their beds. On one side
of a large, pyramidlike rock in the center of the group he made a bed
for his companion, and laid down his own on the other side. Then she
“went into her room,” as she expressed it, and stretched her tired body
on the boughs and a blanket.
Falcon the Flunky did likewise on his side. He was far more tired than
the girl, for, though a fairly good rider, he was not hardened to the
saddle as was she.
To state that he was worried would be putting it lightly. What a
chimerical idea it seemed; and, still, when he reviewed the situation,
he was obliged to compliment Manzanita on her swift decision and
the practicality of her strategy. He did not worry about his own
predicament, but was thinking of the wretched state of mind into which
their flight must have plunged Squawtooth Canby.
If he thought Falcon the Flunky to be a scoundrel--and he could think
little else from his viewpoint--what tortures he must be suffering,
when he knew that his beloved daughter had escaped into the mountains
with such a man and was now at that man’s mercy somewhere up there in
the illimitable fastness.
He could not sleep. Morning came fast now. The sun was casting its
dazzling rays on the tips of the gaunt rocks above his head. Then came
a plaintive voice from the other side of the thick partition.
“Falcon, I can’t sleep! My brain’s going like a herd of longhorns
milling.”
“Neither can I,” he told her. “Come around and we’ll cook our
breakfast; and then we’ll get to our planning.”
“All right; I’m coming.”